Heatable work surfaces have long been used in fields from home cooking to industrial chemistry.
In the field of cooking, after centuries of using simple cookware having metal surfaces to prepare food, rapid increases in cookware surface technology have been achieved this century.
Such recent improvements include refinements in the metals used as the base material for the cookware, variations in the configuration and texture of the cooking surfaces, and the addition of so-called "non-stick" surfaces. An example of such non-stick surfaces is the application of TEFLON.RTM. (Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), DuPont Corp.) as a coating on the working surface of a piece of cookware. Such non-stick coatings have also been used on the cooking utensils which engage the working surfaces of the cookware; for example, TEFLON.RTM.-coated spatulas.
An ongoing problem has been that heat dissipation from the work surface to the food being prepared is often diminished by the application of a non-stick coating to the work surface.
Still further, most non-stick coatings tend to wear off through use, even when utensils having non-stick coatings thereon are used in conjunction with the coated cookware.
Examples of known pieces of cookware include: U.S. Pat. No. 1,063,911 to Chadwick; U.S. Pat. No. 1,460,380 to Hughes; U.S. Pat. No. 1,644,255 to Kercher et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 2,462,242 to Webb et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 2,618,258 to Kroyer; U.S. Pat. No. 2,765,728 to Pearce; U.S. Pat. No. 3,493,726 to Bardeau; U.S. Pat. No. 3,981,233 to Nugarus; U.S. Pat. No. 4,123,560 to Hice; U.S. Pat. No. 4,533,807 to Minamida; U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,427 to Cheng; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,608 to Muchin et al.
Other examples include published British (GB) patent specification No. 618,324 of Feb. 21, 1949; Netherlands (NL) Patent No. 86009, published Aug. 15, 1957; and published European (EP) patent application No. 0 424 072, dated Apr. 24, 1991.
Although each of those patented devices undoubtedly works for its intended purpose, there is a need for a heatable work surface which overcomes the drawbacks of those prior art devices. There is a need for a heatable work surface which dissipates heat readily to foods being prepared, for example, which releases cooked food easily, and which also is easily cleaned. There is likewise a need for such a work surface to accept and retain a non-stick surface, even under prolonged use.